Influencer
Rachel Huber Coined ‘Latte Makeup,’ Brands Turned It Into a Campaign Cycle
Rachel Huber (Rigler) was getting ready for Pilates, drinking coffee, and doing a bronzy makeup look with no blush when she caught her reflection in the studio mirror. She went home, named the look “latte makeup,” and filmed a more deliberate version for TikTok.
By the time Hailey Bieber used the phrase in a selfie caption, the trend had already appeared in Vogue, Good Morning America, and dozens of beauty editorials. The brand briefs came later.
“I framed the makeup look around the word latte,” Rachel says. “I would probably do that in the future as well, come up with the name and then make that the aesthetic we’re going for.”
That sequence, from observation to language to culture to commerce, captures how beauty trend cycles increasingly begin. Rachel, a beauty creator with more than 1.3 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, has built a practice around spotting, naming, and packaging visual ideas before brands know what to brief.
Best known for coining “latte makeup” and helping drive the rise of purple blush and MAC Stack Mascara, Rachel now sits in a position beauty marketers often chase too late: close enough to audience behavior to name the trend before the market monetizes it.
Naming Is the Strategy
The latte makeup origin story began as lived observation, but Rachel says the trend became more deliberate once she attached language to it.
“Once I sat down to film latte makeup, it was more emphasized and dramatic than what I was wearing to the Pilates class,” she says.
That distinction matters. The viral object was not only the look itself, but the name that made the look easy to understand, repeat, and adapt. Rachel says she framed the makeup around the word “latte,” turning an everyday visual reference into an aesthetic that audiences could immediately recognize.
The Anatomy of a Trend That Sticks
Not every look Rachel posts becomes vocabulary. She is precise about what separates the durable from the disposable: access. “The trends that stick are the trends that are inclusive of everybody,” she says. “Anyone can partake in the trend.”
Latte makeup asked nothing demanding of skin tone or existing features. Purple blush, which she helped popularize before it, did. A shade like purple does not look great on every complexion, making it a trend that skews fleeting. The principle extends further. “Like when bushy eyebrows are in, it’s like not everyone has the capability of having big fluffy eyebrows,” she says. “So that’s not a trend that can easily stick around.”
Travel also shapes her perspective, and the visual contrast between places feeds her work. “Every place you go is so unique and different,” she says. “Travel is where I find the most inspiration for beauty.”
The celebrities she watches most closely are working artists rather than editorial faces: Mario Dedivanovic, Danessa Myricks, and Patrick Ta. “I think it’s fun to follow along with what they’re doing and find a way to add my own personality to it,” she says.
Their moves signal where culture is heading. Her job is to give it a name first.
What Happens When Brands Arrive
Hailey Bieber’s latte makeup caption was a genuine surprise. “I remember freaking out and showing my husband,” Rachel says. “It’s really cool to start a trend like that.” The celebrity adoption confirmed that the language had left its origin point and entered general circulation.
What did not follow, at least not in any financially meaningful way for Rachel, was brand recognition of her role. Other creators received paid partnerships anchored to the latte makeup trend. Rachel did not. “I don’t think I got one paid opportunity out of that,” she says.
Rachel notes it without apparent grievance, but the observation is structural. A trend coined by a creator, amplified through celebrity, and monetized through brand campaigns can complete its commercial cycle while the person who generated the language receives nothing from that loop.
Her creator authority is now moving into more formal industry channels. Rachel is a 2026 Sephora Squad member and recently partnered with boutique agency The Gabriel Group for PR and strategic development, a step aimed at translating her trend-driven beauty influence into broader editorial and brand positioning.
Her experience with brands that do engage her is more nuanced. Through Sephora Squad, she creates UGC content through a process she describes as collaborative but occasionally friction-prone: brands send a brief, she submits a concept document, they exchange notes, and she is generally given latitude.
“Most of the time, all of those talking points are, one, boring, and two, sound just like a commercial,” she says. Her fix is pragmatic: strip the scripted language from delivery, place required information as on-screen text if the brand flags it afterward.
The Innovation Gap Brands Are Ignoring
The deeper problem, as Rachel sees it, is not campaign execution but product development. “I think a lot of brands are running out of ideas,” she says, “and we’re seeing the same product being made in a very slightly different way.”
She points to a recent high-profile blush duo launch as an example, arguing that transitional blush formats have existed for years and that repackaging them at a premium price does not constitute genuine innovation. Audiences, she notes, are tracking closely enough to push back.
The shift she is watching is in the luxury market. “It’s going to split in half,” she says, “to where it’s like, you’re going to have the actual Gucci, the Westman Atelier, the high-end expensive makeup, and then you’re going to have the affordable dupes that perform exactly the same for a fraction of the price.” Brands caught in the middle face pressure from both ends.
Beyond cycle trends, she anticipates a move from beauty hacks to beauty theory: “color theory for your skin, what eyeliner placement looks best for your eyes, where to place your blush on your cheekbone for your face shape.” It is a shift from trend consumption toward personalization.
The FaceTime Aesthetic and What It Signals
Rachel’s content philosophy is explicit. “I feel like my content is like FaceTime,” she says. “Let’s do our makeup on FaceTime kind of vibe.” The framing encodes specific production choices: conversational delivery, no heavy edit, and present over polished.
She holds brand alignment to the same standard. Turning down partnerships that do not fit is a standing practice, with her agent handling the communications.
The reasoning is direct. “People work hard for their money,” Rachel says, “and to influence someone to buy something that I don’t even love just so I get a paycheck, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.” The fee is not the criterion. The product is.
Naming What Comes Next
Rachel’s life is reorganizing. She and her husband are selling their Atlanta home and moving to Charleston. They want children. Her content will likely shift to include more lifestyle material alongside beauty, a change she frames as natural rather than strategic.
None of that changes the underlying practice. The instinct that produced “latte makeup” from a Pilates morning and a cup of coffee is the same one she applies now: observe the world, find the word, build the look backward from the name. The trend cycle will keep moving. Brands will keep arriving after the moment has already passed.
“I will always be a beauty girl,” she says, “trying to find innovative ways to make beauty fun.”
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